ACTIVITIES :: International Relations :: Dialogue Coop :: Russia

Russia

St Basil Cathedral

Russia is the EU’s third biggest trade partner, with Russian supplies of oil and gas making up a large percentage of Russia’s exports to Europe. Cooperation with Russia is based on four specific policy areas. These “common spaces” cover:

Economic issues & the environment
Freedom, security & justice
External security
Research & education, including cultural aspects

While the EU and Russia had concluded a Partnership and Co-operation Agreement in 1994, the June 2008 Summit between EU and the Russian Federation saw the launch of negotiations on a new EU-Russia agreement. The first round of negotiations took place in July 2008. Following the Russia/Georgia conflict the EU postponed the second round. These negotiations have now restarted.

DG-INFSO has contacts with Russia on a wide range of items. For some INFSO has the lead and with some other DG’s have the lead. A significant challenge is therefore to maintain coherence and the appropriate linkages. The importance of this point was emphasised in a recent Communication:

“Relations between the EU and its main trading partners cover a wide range of diverse interactions. These have until now been conducted often independently of each other, which makes it more difficult to assess the balance of benefits. The EC should look, in future, at areas where our partners benefit from cooperation with the EU, for example in research and development programmes, while maintaining significant barriers to EU businesses. We need to use all instruments at our disposal in a focused and coherent way, in order to improve export opportunities for European exporters and improve the global regulatory framework.”

COM(2008)874final
"On the External Dimension of the Lisbon Strategy for Growth and Jobs”

Priorities

Russia is a high priority in the external policy of the EU. The main issues in the field of information society which have characterised activity in the recent past were:

Discussions regarding secondary legislation, whose absence creates market distortions, despite a regulatory framework which is perceived as basically in line with EU directives.
Analysis and discussions on World Trade Organisation issues regarding telecommunications, especially on foreign ownership restrictions, on which Russia and the EU reached an agreement.
Contributing to strengthen and revitalise the on-going Partnership and Cooperation Agreement in our fields of interest.
Contribution to increased EC policy coherence and coordination through the EU-Russia Inter-service group chaired by DG-RELEX.

Inter-service cooperation and liaison

An important overall goal, when it comes to our relationship with Russia, is appropriate policy coherence and coordination. For INFSO this implies:

Cooperation of course with RELEX in the various Russia-related activities where they lead and in particular participation in the Negotiation Network.
Cooperation with EAC when it comes to culture and audiovisual policy.
Cooperation with RTD when it comes to the general research policy.
Participation in the Dialogue on Space Cooperation with ENTERPRISE and ESA.
Liaison with JLS in matters linked to the Safer Internet Programme.

Information Society Dialogue

At the St. Petersburg Summit in May 2003, the EU and Russia agreed to reinforce their cooperation by creating in the long term four “common spaces” in the framework of the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement and on the basis of common values and shared interests.

The EU-Russia Summit in Moscow on 10 May 2005 then adopted a package of Road Maps for the creation of these EU-Russia Common Spaces. One of the objectives was closer co-operation towards the establishment of a Common EU-Russia Information Society Area and an EU-Russia Information Society Dialogue.

The EU-Russia Information Society Dialogue is intended to constitute an appropriate framework to address a range of issues and to exchange best practices on clearly identified objectives of mutual interest. It seeks to promote mutual understanding of current and planned future legislation and policy in the field. The target of the Dialogue is to promote the liberalisation of the electronic communications sector by developing transparent procedures and a transparent, reliable and predictable, pro-competitive and technology-neutral regulatory environment.

The main priority is to promote the convergence of electronic communications markets in line with international trends, and especially those of the EU internal market. Therefore support is being given to the development of policies creating an environment and incentives for investments into the telecommunications and Information Society markets.

The EU is encouraging and supporting initiatives for building a knowledge-based Information Society. The Commission is going to promote cooperation and exchange of best practices on programmes such as e-Europe and e-Russia, which are tools for building the Open Society.

Research Co-operation

An EC Science & Technology Agreement was signed with Russia in November 2000 and entered into force in May 2001. A renewal of this agreement was signed in November 2003 and entered into force in February 2004. See also belowoverview of EC S&T Agreements.

A number of IST projects have supported EU-Russia co-operation:

The aim of the project ADMIRE-P (A Dense Multilevel Network for ICT Research Co-operation between the EU and Privolzhsky Federal District) is to increase collaboration and success stories of co-operation in IST between European and the Russian research and industry of the Privolzhsky Federal District (PFD). This is achieved through building up, promoting and operating a multilevel network of regional centres within the PFD regional administrations, together with entity contact points in research organisations and industrial enterprises of the district with a record of advanced achievements in ICT. The project was coordinated by Singleimage Ltd. (UK) and involved in its consortium the University Nizhni Novgorod (UNN) as a full partner.
The project SITE (Siberia, Information Technologies and Europe) aimed to increase cooperation between Russian and EU researchers in the IST area. The project was coordinated by Singleimage Ltd. (UK) and involved in its consortium the Association for Engineering Education of Russia as a full partner.
The project RECIST (Russia-EU Communities in IST) aimed to increase participation of Russian researchers (mainly from the Moscow and St Petersburg areas) in research proposals under the IST Priority. The coordinator was Singleimage Ltd. (UK).
The ISTOK.ru project (Information Society Technologies to Open Knowledge.Russia) aimed to identify constituencies and opportunities for deeper strategic cooperation with Russia and intends to screen and analyze common needs and opportunities by the rank mapping of all Russian ICT technologies relevant to co-operation and the cross-comparison with the European ICT taxonomy.

Last update: 12/01/2011